The playoffs may be over, but.....

.......street hockey lives on!

Recipe of the Day

These muffins were tried and tested today, and they are so good. The best rhubarb muffins I've ever tasted. The recipe is from one of the best (in my opinion!) online sources there is...Mennonite Girls Can Cook.

I made a few modifications to the recipe which I will note here. Instead of 2 cups white flour, I used 1 cup white and 1 cup whole wheat. Then, for the sugar, I used brown sugar instead of white and also decreased the amount a tad, using something between 1/2 - 3/4 cup brown sugar. Otherwise I pretty much followed the recipe as written, except for adding more orange zest than it said to...I love that flavour. One other note - rather than making 12 (which would have been really big in my opinion) I made 18 and they're just the right size. Also, my oven took less than 25 minutes to bake the muffins, so keep an eye on them while baking.

Give them a try, I promise you'll like them! (Oh, and Karen V if you're reading this, your girls shared a muffin after lunch today and both said how yummy it was!!)

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Orange Rhubarb Muffins

2 cups flour
3/4 cups sugar
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup chopped pecans
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp grated orange zest
3/4 cup orange juice
1-1/4 cups finely chopped rhubarb

In a bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, pecans. In another bowl beat egg, add oil, orange zest and orange juice. Add to flour mixture; stir just until moist and blended. Add rhubarb. Spoon batter into greased muffin tins, filling to top. Bake in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees. Yields 12 muffins.

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A bonus recipe, also tried and tested today, very very yummy, and enjoyed by one and all. Teriyaki Chicken. Mmmmmm. Enjoy!!

Musical Achievements

Levi & Owen have both successfully completed their first year of music and piano, with Music for Young Children. It was a wonderful year of music, fun, learning, and confidence-building. As part of this journey, they also played at their very first recital last Saturday. Levi was bursting with confidence in this area, both the playing and also introducing himself and his performance at a microphone. Owen wasn't quite as sure, but ended up doing awesome when we decided to play a duet together and have his teacher introduce him.

Needless to say, we were very proud!!

The official certificates! (last name blotted out...looks dorky, but oh well!)



With their teacher, Mrs. H! :)

Passion

Look what we discovered this evening on our passion vine!! I feel so pleased about this...I've not had good success with other things that I've tried to plant in this spot, but this vine has just taken off and I'm loving it. It has only been planted there maybe a month and a half, and it has more than doubled in size and is growing more and more by the day. Here's hoping we get many more of these beauties! :)

The Battle Continues

Our city is over-run with rabbits. And for the first time this year, they have made their way to our yard. They've mowed down a few of my flowering perennials so many times this spring already that they will likely not bloom this year. And my hostas are nothing more than a few jagged sprigs just barely poking through. I'm holding out hope for my veggie garden, but something seems to be chomping down the bean sprouts too. I'm trying to blame the bugs, but I wouldn't put it past the rabbits either.

We have a trap. We've caught a few rabbits which have been displaced to....well, someone else's neighbourhood quite frankly!! But it's a neighbourhood that has probably hundreds of other bunnies, so what's one more, right? There's one white and gray rabbit in particular that really gets under our skin, Graham says that it sits and mocks him. It seems to make its rounds in the neighbourhood, in our yard at least once every day (that we see) and on other yards that we can see from our kitchen window.

So this evening we went out for a walk around the trail near our house. The boys had a ton of fun chasing and tormenting the rabbits that we came across en route, and when we were nearing our house we saw that white bunny, just lounging on the side of the road right beside our fence. The plan to surround the bunny was hatched and set into motion, but then......a Jeep whipped by on the road, nearly missing the rabbit as it bolted across. I was saying (out loud, I think!) "YES YES YES", hoping that it would get run over (how horrible is that?!), and get this - there was a woman from down the street biking past and she was horrified that this Jeep almost ran it over and she was upset that anyone would do such a thing, meanwhile we have a trap set in our yard and a pellet gun in the wings (no joke!). Then the cherry on top, this woman said "We have a rabbit, and that one is our rabbit's boyfriend!" What??!!!! Sheesh.

Moving up in the world...

We took the plunge today and bought Levi a new bike. This one is quite a few steps up from his last one - we're talking hand brakes, gears, 24" tires, and....drum roll please....NO training wheels!! Levi said to me "With my new bike, I feel like a much bigger boy than I actually am!" Wish us luck, as I feel the learning curve is going to be quite steep. :)

Hats

So stylish, so versatile, so......well, downright cute no matter which way you slice it!